BOOK: Born to Run – Christopher McDougall

I stood in a bookshop in Galway city a few years back, trying to distract myself from the hangover I was suffering severely from that morning. A group of us were there for the weekend on a friends stag. I looked around and one by one spotted the gang I was with, all suffering the same, all killing time and waiting for the bus home to Dublin and all looking for a distraction be in it magazine form or book form. The conversation levels between us had slumped which is normally the outcome after a two day and night drinking session where you go from pub to pub to club to take away fast food joint at some ungodly hour of the morning on your way back to your hotel or hostel.

A while before this weekend came around I had taken up running and throughout a year where I set myself a somewhat ridiculous challenge that was (at the start of it) well outside my physical ability to complete (which I did amazingly by the end of it) the name of a book kept popping up on social media running pages and in magazines. It was this book that my hangover and I decided to finally seek out that Sunday morning in Galway. This book was ‘Born To Run’ by Christopher McDougall.

As a foreign correspondent, McDougall covered wars in Rwanda and Angola for the Associated Press and it wasn’t until after this that he started work on Born To Run, which is an international best-seller. It’s so successful and popular now that it’s being made into a movie and apparently Matthew McConaughey is set to play the main man himself.

If you’re a runner, a fun runner, a jogger or just anyone who’s interested in sports or running at all, this is a great book to get your hands on. It starts with McDougall asking the simple question and one which most runners will no doubt ask themselves at some point – “Why does my foot hurt?”

The story develops from there in search of the answer and you’re brought on the journey that he takes, encountering some weird and wonderful people along the way. He goes in search of the Tarahumara Indians isolated in Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons who have the ability to pretty much run bare foot for a bazillion miles without ever getting injuries or breaking a sweat. There’s the mysterious loner ‘Caballo Blanco’ who lives among the tribe who McDougall gets the help of to uncover their secrets while at the same time finding his own inner ultra-athlete as he trains for a challenge of a lifetime, pitting an odd bunch of Americans including a star ultra-marathoner, a sexy young surfer and barefoot wonder against the tribe in a fifty mile long race.

Alongside this story there’s also the science side of things and when reading it, I found myself saying ‘no way’ inside my head quite a bit. There’s an eye opening story in it, where a rep from one of the biggest running shoe manufacturers in the world goes to visit a college running team they sponsor and provide shoes to. The rep, after taking his seat in the stalls to watch the team train, spots something odd and calls the coach over to ask him ‘why aren’t they wearing the shoes we sent?’ The coach simply says something along the lines of ‘because they were hurting them.’

The research in it is also amazing to read. What McDougall uncovers and writes about makes you question everything you think you know about running, from the mass produced running shoes that the global companies dish out with promises of better performance and less injuries, to the levels some runners push their personal limits to in an ever increasing number of ultra- runners aiming for greatness and longer distances.

Born To Run is a brilliant read, filled with sharp wit, incredibly interesting people, attention grabbing stories and revelations that will keep the mind of a runner and even non-runners glued to the page.